Building New Exhibits and Maintaining our Aquarium

What does it take to maintain a world-class Aquarium? World-class teams! Today on Aquarium of the Podcific, we are joined by Mike Davis and Reed Edwards to discuss the duties of their respective teams and what it was like building the new exhibits inside our reimagined Southern California Gallery.

Episode Transcript

The reimagined Southern California Gallery is now open!

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Hi, I'm Marin Lundy, and I'm Madeline Walton, and this is Aquarium of the Pacific. A podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Southern California's largest aquarium. Join us as we learn alongside the experts in animal care, conservation, and more.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Welcome back to Aquarium of the Podcific. I'm Marin Lundy, Conservation Coordinator for Mammals and Birds, an animal care specialist. And I'm Madeline Walton, the Aquarium's digital content and community manager. Erin, what are we gonna learn about today?

SPEAKER_03 0:35

Today we are highlighting our newest gallery here at the aquarium and some of the work that went into that new gallery. So two departments that I don't think people often think about when you are building something at an aquarium are not really directly animal related, but also in the sense really are animal-related. Yeah. And so we are talking to Mike Davis, who works in our facilities department, and they sort of work with maintaining a lot of the integrity of our infrastructure. And then we're also going to be talking to Reed Edwards, who works in our life support department, which really is exactly what it sounds like. Supporting life at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Exactly. They help build and plumb and you know really maintain the systems the way that they're supposed to. And that's a team who's here 24-7. Yeah, they're here a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Yeah, they're here always watching.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

So we're really lucky that we get such an inside look at sort of what goes into it beyond just the animal component of it, because we've talked a lot about animals this season, but we haven't talked too much about all the other things that go into making an aquarium work. So Mike break or no, he does not break anything. Mike fixes everything that I break. And actually, Reed is the one that I called to help me fix the other things that I break because they relate more to our animal care things. So we have two entire departments dedicated to things that Aaron breaks. Yeah. Absolutely. I really sound like I'm the worst employee thing this whole season. I'm like, I didn't know how to die when I started. And then we break everything, and everyone's gonna have to fix everything around me. And now I have that's they just put me in a room. They're like, just put her down somewhere. You can't break anything in this padded room when you're talking. Um, so yeah, that's that's me. It's a little bit about me. Um, but this episode's gonna be about Mike and Reed and sort of some of the work that went into the SoCal gallery and reimagining that new gallery that has not been redone since 25 years ago. And also a little background on what else they do around here. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Ready?

SPEAKER_03 2:33

Ready. Ready.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Ready.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

All right. Well, thank you so much, Mike, for joining us. And do you want to tell us a little bit about what your job is, what's your title, and how long have you worked here at the aquarium?

SPEAKER_04 2:44

Oh, well, thanks for having me. Um, by the way, people, my name is Mike. Do everything. It's true. Um I've been here for about 10 years now. I started in housekeeping, which is now environmental services, basically cleaning the place up. And I've been promoted, I would say, about four to five times to the point where now I am a level three tech and facilities building engineer. Um I worked in security previously, and I was a safety manager in security. And um this place gives you opportunity if you're willing to put in the work for it. Um if you either went to college or trade or any type of trade school and you can um find a department that fits your skill level, more than likely they're happy to usher you in and build on your skills and make you become a better person than what you were. And me, I'm very energetic and greedy when it comes to learning new things, especially when there are physical things like builds and um computer automation controls and things of that nature. So I just jumped on it and I haven't turned around.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

Yeah, I think that um Mike's basically saying he's done everything that there is to do here, and he continues to do everything that there is to do here.

SPEAKER_04 3:57

Yeah, well, I I don't know how to say no just yet. And so my list of duties are um skyscraper-size at this point. I never complete the list because I finished one just to add three. And, you know, it keeps my mind busy. It it keeps me functioning and it keeps everybody think that they're bothering me because I'm busy all the time. But it's okay. There's big jobs and little jobs. And I found that when you knock out the little jobs, it makes everybody else um feel good about doing their job because the little stuff being their way. My big projects are not in other departments' way or um things that they gotta worry about. And so that's where I put my attention to. Um, I like to communicate, uh, create that bridge between departments because if you go under, you don't have to know how to do it, but if you at least part of the process and you know what's going on time-wise, um, you feel a little better about about things and not just in the dark.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:55

Can you fix this? And I say yes. And then you don't hear anything else, and then you're just wondering. So, hey, did Mike fix it? So I try to stay on point with uh those communications all the time. So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 5:08

I think um one of my favorite things is that every time I have a project or something that needs doing, I can go to you and be like, I have an idea, but I have no way to make it a reality. Like I haven't, I don't have the skill set to do something engineering-wise to make my idea real. And without fail, every time you're like, Oh, I know how to do that. Just give me a couple days, I'll get the materials. And you've like already ordered them somehow, and then like an hour later, it's fixed.

SPEAKER_04 5:33

My live blueprints without having it on paper. Um, I like to go to the location and have a conversation with the person and what they want. And so as we're having this conversation, I'm drawing the blueprint up in my head. Um, I have like a catalog of materials that we have and what I can order. And by the end of the conversation, whether I've built it before or not, it doesn't mean that I can't build it. And I usually will, and then I'll get it done sooner than the later. I mean, sooner is better for me. Um, we have a process for big projects, but when they're little, I'd be like, just tell me and then send an email to all the bosses. That way I can pre-prep parts, and by the time the bosses get to me, they like you finished already?

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:12

Yes, I'll have started up the head a little bit early, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

That's awesome. So, can you tell us a little bit about the facilities department? What does the facilities department do?

SPEAKER_04 6:21

All right, the facilities department are the caretakers of the entire building when it comes to heating, um, chilling, and all automation. Um so the temperatures of the tanks are ran by our uh chill, our our chillers, which we have three major big chillers. We have air handlers on the roof. And so our air handlers control temperature in the air, but also contaminants in the air. It gets filtered out. Um we have special filters to catch certain things. Um certain areas are more um susceptible to things, so they have HEPA filters, and then other areas it's just particulate filters. Might not know what I'm saying, but it's but you know, but we're we're keeping every environment its own environment. And so we have northern Pacific, which is a different environment from tropical Pacific. You can just tell by the name in northern, cold, tropical, warm, and so we have different things going on in that nature. Um all the plumbing and electrical in the whole building is our responsibility. So if we have to do teardowns and rebuild, we do it all in-house, like complete structures. Um we took took down a whole building whose studs were wood, so it was rotted and took it to the ground. He got rid of it and built a whole new building in its place with more um environmental stable materials. And they left me over there for about two months to Mike, just figure it out. And there was no one to say this is how you do it.

SPEAKER_03 7:52

You have to know how to do it.

SPEAKER_04 7:53

I just have to get in there, I have to like analyze what my problem is, see what my tools are available, and then just go and go and go and go. And um, I have a good boss, his name's Tom. He he he sees that when I'm looking at something and I'm silent, I'm calculating. And he'll tell people to leave me alone. I'm in the city. And then he'll tell them to watch. He'll tell we had a we have a big theater now, a new one, with a very expensive camera, and they came to set it up. They thought they had what they needed to set it up. And then Tom just told me to come with them. He didn't tell me to do anything. And so I just go with him to watch these contractors put this, you know, high cost camera up. And they're they're they're looking around and they're looking up, and I tell Tom, how are they gonna get that up there? Tom says, I don't know, it's it's their job. And then I said, But look at Tom, look at so I'm pointing that stuff, and Tom is looking at me and smiling. And I said, Hey Tom, I'll be right back. And so I I I left and I just thought of what we have on site that could get this in position without no one getting hurt by doing it. And so the guys are sitting there staring, and then I said, I can get it up there. And so he's saying, So how are you gonna do it? And then I get silent because I'm I'm looking at everything, and then hey Tom, so what is he gonna do? And he like, shh, just watch. He's like, just watch. And then I I I come back with you know a crank, I restabilize the area where we're standing at, and I get it up there, and the guy turned around and said, What's your name? I was like, Mike. He was like, Mike, thank you so much. He was like, I saved his day. That's us every day.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

Thank you, Mike so much. Oh Mike. It'd be maybe you know different if we had a problem and we called an outside company, hey, can you come fix this problem? Versus someone that talks to the people that work here and knows the issues that they're facing every day and can design something so much more efficiently for our purposes.

SPEAKER_04 9:43

That's what I try to do like the most. Well, I talk to the people I'm gonna give it to. I have my work order and what you're asking me to do, and then I talk to the people because I need to know why there was an issue in the first place. And so if I'm gonna build something new, I don't want to create the same problem you had before.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

And um that'd be a waste of your time and everyone's back again. Yeah, exactly. And I'll be back again. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 10:05

And I try to do that um most of the time. Just or if I do do a build, I walk a person through it and explain to them why this is happening and why this is happening. Because um people um like if it's not what you do, it's certain things you just don't pay attention to. Yeah, I pay attention to everything. I can't help it.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

We need your brain and stuff like that, especially somewhere, you know, where we have animals and there's there's different precautions that we have to take and you know adds another layer of security to everything that we do.

SPEAKER_03 10:35

I have a question for you, Madeline, and I want you to think about this, yes, while I give my answer to the thing you think. What is the funniest thing that you've broken that Mike's had to fix? And I can tell you for me, as recent memory, was that I was leaning against one of the perimeter boards at our holding otter area, and I was leaning on it to feed the otters, and it snapped in half. And I fully broke the entire that part of our emotion. But I fully like broke this board and then turns out also broke what was holding the board up. And I just had to go explain to Mike. And I the second you opened his your mouth, he was blueprinting. He was like, Well, I already fixed it, you know, like it basically was already done. But like, you know, then having to work together with these animals that are very curious about stuff and finding a way to get Mike into that area that was safe for him and that the otters weren't stealing all your tools or doing whatever it is that otters like to do. We heard a lot about how much dummies they are. And then just having that fixed like so immediately and having it. It's nice to have a resource like that where I'm like, yeah, I embarrassingly fell and broke everything.

SPEAKER_04 11:44

Yeah, I remember now.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Well, Mike has helped with things that are super important, like that. And then something that's like pretty unimportant to our day-to-day is that we um have our digital camera that we use for marketing purposes and it's locked up in a in a drawer, and one day the lock just fully broke and couldn't get to the camera. And I went up to Mike and I'm like, hey, like, you know, this this I maybe I sent an email to you because I am scared and I'm like, I didn't break it, I promise. But here's the information you need to know. And like it was fixed so quickly. And like, not only was it fixed, the whole lock had to be replaced. And like he got this new key and showed me how to use this new key and everything, and you've just been great. Also, you're very nice when I was harassing you the other day about the ice machine in the break room. Because we have our um the otters have one too, this ice that's like it's the good ice. If you know what I'm talking about, it's the good ice. And I walk in and I see Mike messing with the ice machine. I'm like, wait, you're replacing it. Is it still gonna be the good ice? And he's like, it's gonna be even better. Ooh, and he's right.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

He improved the ice.

SPEAKER_04 12:40

More efficient ice.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

Oh, okay. The ice is efficient. Well, so from everything important to you know, our animal safety and making sure Aaron doesn't fall through anything again to the iceberg.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

Well, we don't know if we can make sure that I may fall through more things. What is something sort of unexpected about working in your department that some people might not realize is part of your job?

SPEAKER_04 12:58

Unexpected. I don't I don't think unexpected fits me because like I don't want to say no, I just want more experience at everything. So unexpected will will be me taking over the job that they might have wanted a contractor to do, but they wasn't doing the job right, or they did it and it wasn't what we need. So are we going to go back and forth with someone to get it right, or can we take care of it in-house? Can we get it to the level that husbandry needs it? Because um, we can have stuff built by outsiders, but they don't talk to husbandry. They don't know what can be dangerous to the animals, yeah, it's from simple glues and pipes. Um and so that stuff, it happens all the time. So I guess it's unexpected, but I expect it.

SPEAKER_03 13:44

You expect it.

SPEAKER_04 13:46

Um because it's it's just a realm that we're in, and I'm not saying somebody did a bad job, but they're not linked in with the education department, um, with the dive locker rooms, and they asking more questions. Yeah. I ask a ton of questions.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:00

I like the panoramic paint of a view of what's going on and keep it widescreen.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:05

And then try and cover all the bases.

SPEAKER_03 14:07

I think it's funny. I know that there's been mornings where I'm in at 6 a.m. and I've seen you here like working on the lurky forest or something, and then there was night shifts where I'm here at 11 p.m. and Mike is fixing the floor in the otter the northern gallery. Well, the other question that we wanted to ask you about your position is like, do you interact with the animals day to day in your job?

SPEAKER_04 14:26

Well, I've took in every opportunity to interact with animals on a constant basis.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:32

So I've been snorkeling with the sharks and rays in the trap tank. Um, I've took a little boat out in the shark tank and shark lagoon so I can do work in the inside.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

You took a boat out there?

SPEAKER_04 14:42

Yes. I had me a little bitty boat, and and I had a rope on both sides pulling myself across the tank. That's funny while I was drilling in the wall and laying the stuff in there and touched the shark when it's gone by. I fed the otters. Um me and the otters are like homies. Yeah, but we have a lot of new ones, so we gotta kind of have a little one-on-one time. Um I flew our red tip hawk, our red tail hog.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Um who I hear is your favorite animal.

SPEAKER_04 15:08

Yes, I am a raptors guy.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:10

And uh, not basketball team. And the penguins. The penguins are some of the funniest animals. Um, I had that the greatest opportunity was when you have them in your lap and then they're poop on your shoe. Yeah, it's an honor. That's the greatest thing. It's like that's that's that's your ritual to to get in to kind of be the cool guy with the penguins. Um, and so yeah, I mean, other than that, everything is like everybody can go to the touch tank and and like touch rays or see anemones and see slots and things of that nature. But those particular things, the the snorkeling, the the flying of the hawk, that's at the top of the list.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

Yeah. That's so awesome. I love that. I love that, you know, we work in a place where I I know I can personally take that for granted sometimes. You know, I have a stressful day or something's going on, and then you know, I have to like remind myself, look at where you work, walk out, and you can just go and stand in the tropical tunnel for an hour and just kind of reset a little bit. Or I can go and tell Erin, like, hey, I'm having a bad day, and she's like, Come feed a sea lion, come feed an accent. That's what I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_04 16:10

You can go up there and and get and give handshakes with Parker. Who can go just give a handshake with Parker in the middle of the day? And it just makes your day feel better.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

We're so lucky. So I just fake that I have bad days all the time.

SPEAKER_03 16:20

Yeah, I think that's the coolest part. Like, there's so much community, and then I think that you work so hard to build relationships with all these people too. And the only way that we ever feel like we can repay you is with, hey, here's some experience working with the animals. And for us, it feels like you know, this is all we can offer you. But it's nice to hear that that is something that you look forward to.

SPEAKER_04 16:41

I'm waiting to get to is some of the training.

SPEAKER_03 16:44

Yeah, you want to train our animals? I want to do like you're stealing everyone's jobs out here. Contractors out of the way, everyone else out of the way, training the sea lions, training the sea lions. You know what?

SPEAKER_04 16:54

I'm trying to use every second in the 24-hour clock. I only need three hours for sleep and then come right back in. But that's one of the things that I like when I watch it, when they're doing the feeds with the sea lions and have them, you know, come back, go down, spot over here, and yeah, I just tell me they did.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

Do you have a favorite sea lion? Is it Parker?

SPEAKER_04 17:15

Um it it's me and Parker got this strange relationship. I went up there to take pictures with him before on the birthday, and I have a full-on beard. It was when I had it nice and thick. You know, now Parker weighed about five times more than me. Parker got next to me, his whisker touched my beard, he stopped, he looked at me. What the heck? You supposed to have hair on your face?

SPEAKER_03 17:38

I have hair on my face.

SPEAKER_04 17:39

He's like, No, no, no, no. I think he backed all the way up and he looked at me, shaking his head, like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I was like, how did I be? That was the that was that that was funny.

SPEAKER_03 17:50

That was funny. He's sensitive in the summertime. You know who's also a cancer? Parker. Yeah. We're sensitive, we're a sensitive group. Well, he he's turning 21 this year, um, which is exciting for Parker in and of himself. But he goes through what's called rut during the summertime, where he gets up to 850 pounds, I think is the biggest he's ever been, and then he gets really sensitive.

SPEAKER_04 18:10

That's when that's probably why he looks so huge. I'm in there, I'm like, Parker, you hear me.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

He is big in this.

SPEAKER_04 18:15

Brother, you are so big.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

But because they go through this thing where they gain a ton of weight, and what they typically be doing is defending their territory and fighting off other males and guarding their harem of females. And he doesn't really do any of that stuff here because it's just him and then some other males in the habitat. He doesn't seem to miss it, but he still goes through the hormonal fluctuation of gaining weight and then losing weight. So it's so easy for things to just kind of like make him get the ick for lack of a better word. One time he stepped on a little cut piece of herring and he like picked up his flipper and looked so horrified by it because it was all squished on his flipper, and he looked visibly shaken, and he fully left, like went all the way to the water and would not come back. He was like, Oh, that is funny. So dare you be. He gets to ick real bad.

SPEAKER_04 19:04

It's like anybody that owns a puppy and walks around barefooted.

SPEAKER_03 19:07

Oh, yeah, oh yeah. That's what he experienced today. Poor God Parker. You know what? I feel for him. So on your birthday, we'll see about getting you into training to sea line. But maybe not Parker since he's so good.

SPEAKER_04 19:18

Well, I'm I don't have the full on beard.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

It's true, you've shaved maybe he'll be fine in his program. So funny. Well, we did want to talk a little bit about we're reimagining one of our original galleries here at the aquarium, the SoCal Gallery for the first time since the aquariums opened in 1998 for our 25th anniversary, it's being totally redone. And I know that there is a lot of planning that goes into it, not just from like the exhibit and you know tank design side of it, but also from the facilities and life support departments, because we had to rip down walls to make that whole process start. So, what was that like on your end?

SPEAKER_04 19:53

Um, it's a lot of work. It's a lot it's a lot of work and it's you would think the area is big, right? Okay, we have this big area, and so we can all come in here and just do our thing, but then you realize it's not as big as you thought. It's people working right next to people. So executing your plans and and where you want to start is probably the most important thing. So that if one person is one area, somebody else needs to be in another area. But what if you can't do your your part A without this part over here being done? Um and so then we have to take the plans that were by uh that we get from who designs everything, and we have to make it work in the area. Um some things are not covered, um but we have to make it work regardless. Um measurements are give or take. Um we have lots of plumbingness in aquarium. So our pipes are coming out out of everywhere and going everywhere. And so you can lose space fast once you start getting up into the ceiling. Um but we have to be on point to where none of that matters because we still gotta find a way around that. We will hit a left, put an elbow, and plumb something around something because there's no we can't not plumb it. And so we and we can't really. You know, we can't do it.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

This one doesn't even matter, we'll just have it for show. It's okay.

SPEAKER_04 21:20

And so even though there's a lot of plans and you have blueprints and where stuff goes, that's like 50% of the battle. Um the other 50% is the actual putting it in place and making it all work and making it functional, but also making it safe. Um, and making it to where when we walk away from it, the husband can come in and they can do their job and they're not in danger. Umundations, um, we are in California, so the earthquake thing is real. Um we would hate to put something up, have it shake, and then it starts cracking and the tank leans over and yeah, I never thought about like seismic protection.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

Like, how do we protect our tanks and you know, acrylic structures and all those things? Against seismic activity.

SPEAKER_04 22:01

The bigger the tank, the better for itself.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 22:04

Um, because um it's holding so much weight and it's not sitting on a platform. They're sitting on on concrete.

SPEAKER_03 22:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 22:12

Um but then you got like our our what are the what what are the first tanks that's gonna be in the new gallery when you first walk in?

SPEAKER_03 22:20

The gobies?

SPEAKER_04 22:21

No, the focus tanks. They're up, and and so I have a fiberglass um frame for them to sit on. Reinforce the heaviest one with stainless steel, but they're all sitting on a real thick rubber pad that can take the vibrations. And the tank is acrylic, and the acrylic and the rubber almost act like a glue. As long as there's no liquid in between, it won't slide. Um you can put braces around the tank back to the wall. Um, the same way you would do flat screen TVs if you put them high.

SPEAKER_03 22:52

You're supposed to each of our tanks is actually just a flat screen TV. This is how you found out.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

Hey, I've seen an aquarium like that.

SPEAKER_03 23:00

If you poke the actual acrylic, it just has that weird little plasma thing. What is that?

SPEAKER_04 23:05

And like so things like that come from us on our side. Yeah. So when we get our plans, that's not included. But when the build is finished and you're looking, like, okay, safety, so what if it shakes? Okay, now add, add, add. Yeah. And um, and that could be for anything.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

It's such a valuable resource is to have someone who's so, like I said, intertwined with everything and thinks of things like that.

SPEAKER_03 23:28

I think um recently one of the things that I got to help participate in is moving our eelgrass tank into our SoCal gallery.

SPEAKER_04 23:37

Wonderful time.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

It was a lot of work. But one of the funniest parts of it is that it's just like this, it almost felt like this ragtag team of people working together to find a way. So this tank is brand new. You guys are gonna see it when you come visit the SoCal Gallery. It is 30 feet long, it is no joke, 30 feet long, and the only way to get it into the gallery was to push it through the sea lion tunnel.

SPEAKER_04 24:01

30-foot tank with two pallet jacks.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

Yeah. It was crazy.

SPEAKER_04 24:06

One pallet jack was motorized and one wasn't, but that didn't really help. Um it was the manpower. And not only moving it to where it goes, of course it's not sitting on the floor. That would be too easy. No, we have to, yeah, we had to get it at least three feet up and onto a concrete platform. Um, but it all happened. Um, give or take, cutting out some of the wall for a protein skewer.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

But but you made it happen.

SPEAKER_04 24:39

But that's what we have to do because putting the wall back is easy. The wall is drywall and steel studs, so we can cut that out, we can put that back, and then you will never know we we cut it in the first place.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

I have been in there since, and I didn't notice that that wall was rubber.

SPEAKER_04 24:54

And the way the tanks are built, then um, those what protein skimmers, they have to be on the outsides. Because I was asking, well, why are they not behind it? And I was told they can't be. And so I said, Okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

I'll make it work.

SPEAKER_04 25:07

Yeah, I don't do that part, so I'll I'll accept that part. And so on boat, we got it up there. That's it. And um I know we're talking about it like it was just was fun in games, but when you see it, please think about it.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Yeah, how much do you think that tank weighed?

SPEAKER_04 25:24

A lot.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Yeah. And just imagine like, what was it, like seven or ten of us just physically pushing it with our body weight? Sea lions watching you in the tunnel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:33

And oh, it was a show.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

Like the sea lions were very entertained by it.

SPEAKER_04 25:36

People think that they come here to see the sea lions, but really the sea lions go to the tunnel to watch people.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Yeah. Chase especially. He's like, what you guys doing down there? Let's play. But I think um something like that, like, people don't think about that. They don't think about how this, I don't know how many pounds, but very, very heavy tank got in place because you know, they just show up and they see, and that's kind of what we want. You know, we don't necessarily want people thinking about like, how did that tank get in here? But at the same time, when you're building something, those are all things that have to be considered that I don't think most people think about. So it's pretty cool to think that like you and then Reed from Life Support, who we're gonna talk to also, um, we're working so hard behind the scenes to make this very seamless experience for our guests that no one's going to notice the work that you do, but in the best possible way. Like that's the point of it almost.

SPEAKER_04 26:25

With all these cell phones, we didn't get no videos.

SPEAKER_03 26:28

I have a picture of the tank though.

SPEAKER_04 26:29

So I think I heard some people got some content.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

I think I have a video of the two forklifts moving the tank at the same time. That was fun too. Which was the coolest thing to do. It's also happened at like 7 p.m. Right.

SPEAKER_04 26:42

Oh, me and Chris driving it on the forklift. That was that was pretty fun.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

So this long tank had two forklifts, one on each side of it, because you obviously can't tilt it up one way or another, and one forklift can't handle it because it's 30 feet long. And so, for me, who has no engineering brain whatsoever, I was like, How are we gonna move this thing from where it was delivered in our service yard to the gallery? Yeah, and it was so cool to see like two forklifts, one on either end, and then someone on a walkie being like, up a little, no, pull back, pull back, and then having the forklifts move at the exact same speed to move the stink. Like a good wave. Yeah, it was so cool. And I was like, I don't know how you did it.

SPEAKER_04 27:20

And then we had to change from the driver to the puller. Like I was in front, and Chris was the power, so I was in neutral. Yeah, but neutral that wasn't working out, so I told Chris, I gotta be the power, and you just you gotta be in neutral. Um, and that's just to get it in front of these doors. Yeah, and then we just shove it in. Yeah, then we pushed it in. I think the ooh and the ahs from the people were something that I like when we was going through Shark Lagoon.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Yeah, because if we wasn't close, they were like, Oh, mommy, look, that's big.

SPEAKER_04 27:52

He said, That's big.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

It is surprisingly big. I'm really excited for our guests to be able to come see it. And like while you're in it, I'm sure it's difficult. You know, like while you're trying to move it, it's like, all right, we gotta do this. And then afterwards, like, that's gonna be here for a very long time. And that story is gonna mean so much to so many people because people are gonna come and enjoy that exhibit. And that's pretty much every single exhibit you see at the aquarium. There's a story behind it like that. How it got in the first place, uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 28:19

What walls we had to remove to make it make it get in the hell you don't even notice that that work happened because that's the point. It's like you are just enjoying the ocean, and you wouldn't be able to have that sort of seamless experience without Mike's participation in it.

SPEAKER_04 28:32

So another great one was the yellow tail tank.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

Oh, and vision TV?

SPEAKER_04 28:36

Yeah. I'm not even gonna get into it, but it was a day. Hey, that was the day because we we had to lift it.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:44

On the second story, yeah. Under the well.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 28:47

And you see how big it is. Yeah. And then over and over the lip, but not hit the well hanging from the ceiling.

SPEAKER_03 28:53

So scary.

SPEAKER_04 28:53

Like that that was that was a good one. That would that was a good one.

SPEAKER_03 28:57

I think I would be very satisfied to see the conclusion of that, but I would be so stressed watching. Like, I was stressed out watching the 30-foot tank get like forklifted because I was like, it was, you know, it's heavier on one side because of all the acrylic and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_04 29:10

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 29:12

But as soon as it's done, you're like, wow, we did it. Like that was really cool. What are you the most excited about for the SoCal gallery in all the things that you've been working on? What have you seen that you're like, that's gonna be cool when it's open?

SPEAKER_04 29:24

I think this gallery is gonna bring a lot of energy. Like when you walk in, it's gonna have your eyes going to the right, going to the left, going up. Wait a minute, a projector up, looking at the ground, like it's gonna be so much going on, I think that it's gonna be something for everyone when they get in that gallery. Um, the tank we were just talking about, it's it's so long and it can show so much um ocean life going on just in one tank. I can't wait to see that that one finish just because the sheer length of it, it's just looks like it'd be beautiful. Yeah, what else? Um, I mean, when you get to the tunnel, you know, the sea lines is the start of the show. But I think the way it was before, I'm not saying it was bad, but you come from a from being well lit at Blue Cavern, and it's like you enter a cave.

SPEAKER_03 30:13

Yeah, it was dark in there.

SPEAKER_04 30:15

And it's like a cave. And then when you're coming out of the cave, you're at the tunnel. And so now when you're coming from Blue Cavern, and when you come in, it's gonna be like, oh, what's this? Um, you have something educational, flash screen, um giving out information, then you have this projector, then you had this tank, then you had this other projector, yeah, you have a tank and a bigger tank, then a bigger tank, then another projector, and it's just it's so much going on around there. I think that's probably gonna be one of the best things. There's gonna be a lot of uh photo ops in there.

SPEAKER_03 30:47

Madeline's excited.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

I'm so like we're gonna get lots of we do have an Instagram, um, like Instagrammable spots planned in there. We've already planned it. Like we know where the best spots are. Yeah, if you need any profile picture, come visit the aquarium. I think it's got some spots for you.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

I think it's gonna be cool because I with the projection and everything, it almost looks like you are walking under the water surface.

SPEAKER_04 31:08

Exactly. That's when all that's kicked in, that's gonna be nice.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

I love that. I'm so excited because it is you know a gallery that has been here for 25 years and has been relatively unremodeled, relatively untouched. I've seen it the same way since I was an intern in 2015. Since coming here as a kid, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 31:25

This is the second gallery I've been a part of rebuilding. The first one was our um changing, um, animal changing gallery.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

That's now part of PV.

SPEAKER_04 31:35

Um I think I was here, uh yeah, I was doing six day weeks. Um I was helping the contractors from Germany um with um everything that's on the wall when you go in the art gallery, all the crystal hanging from the ceiling, none of that would have been up. Like they had the crystal, but they didn't have to get it up and stay up. The foundation of the stuff to hold it in place.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

And those are delicate, so you don't want them falling, let alone, you know. The idea that they're like, we have this. Uh oh. Yeah, like we need a couple of things.

SPEAKER_04 32:05

I gotta make it stay. And so that was just fun. Because if we, I mean, you look in and then okay, if I get this and lay this out on the floor, and then if you see it happening, you wouldn't know what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:15

But I kind of do, and you're like, why is that laying on the ground? I said, Well, I got lasers and I'm mapping out the ceiling and matching this with that, and then somehow I gotta get this in the ceiling. Yeah, and then once that's in the ceiling, now we have the structure to hang all the crystals from. And then that white clay sculpture on the wall that we have a projector projecting on. I had to put all of that on the wall. Yeah, they just came with the stuff.

SPEAKER_03 32:40

They're like, here's the sculpture, and good luck.

SPEAKER_04 32:43

This is heavy. Yeah, this is nice and heavy. Um, but they had the brackets, but it was like, we need some help making sure when we put it in the wall, it don't fall out of the wall.

SPEAKER_03 32:53

Yeah. Um and pull the wall with it.

SPEAKER_04 32:55

And so I spent a lot of time over there with that one. But that was fun. I think demo was funner.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

Yeah, I mean, Mike let me uh go in with the sledgehammer and break down one of the walls in the SoCal gallery. I was having a bad day, and I was like, Mike, can I please put a hammer through the wall? And it was when we were doing the demo for it. To be clear, it was not while the SoCal Gallery was open, but it was part of breaking it down.

SPEAKER_04 33:17

It kind of went well because four more people came over.

SPEAKER_03 33:19

Oh, we all needed it that day.

SPEAKER_04 33:21

Yeah, it was a section of the wall. Now we were gonna cut it, cut it out big wise and just pull the whole big piece out. But they they, you know, a little extra energy. Yeah. So if I hear you can take it.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

It's enrichment for us. And they all left smiling.

SPEAKER_04 33:35

Yeah, everybody left smiling.

SPEAKER_03 33:37

The equivalent of you meeting Parker is me breaking up. Okay. I needed this today. And it's just it's so fun and it's so satisfying.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

Is there an area of the aquarium that you would love to like just dive into and just fully remodel or fully do something different with? Do you have like a vision, a Mike Davis vision for a gallery or an exhibit?

SPEAKER_04 33:58

You know what? I wish we could bring back when we had the little crocodiles.

SPEAKER_03 34:02

They were so cute. They were really, really cute.

SPEAKER_04 34:08

And they were everybody had their color, like that was purple, that was yellow, that was blue. If we can bring them back.

SPEAKER_03 34:13

Mike's like, I'm gonna build an entire new alligator exhibit.

SPEAKER_04 34:16

I got ideas, but I would have to sit down because right now it's like a lot of unfocused ideas. And then, but I would oh bring back the milkweed plants so we can get the monarch butterflies also.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Yeah, I think that's in process. Yeah, we're doing it. There's a butterfly garden. There was a couple of cocoons out there recently, too. Oh, so so they're coming. So yeah, things are happening. My sleep, we need these butterflies back.

SPEAKER_04 34:40

Um, to everyone listening, I knew nothing about milkweed and monarchs and all this great stuff. But being at the aquarium, I've learned a whole lot.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:51

And how one butterfly likes this one and one likes that one. And it's like it's just the coolest plant to have if you want a natural, like a natural beauty thing to just happen all by itself. Something that you don't have to go monitor or maintain besides water the plant. Um, you can do it in your backyard. Yeah, just grow a bunch of milkweeds, and then the right time of the year you come out and you got monarchs flying everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

And they're endangered too, right? So we're doing everything we can to help them out. We have a green roof, which I think is something that we are working to continually improve. But the green roof has some milkweed growing on it too. And so um, hopefully the butterflies can hang out up there, and then we have a butterfly garden behind the aviary, I believe. And it's not where public can really access just because we want to make sure that those butterflies and their chrysalises are all protected, but that's something that um my boss Rob and a bunch of our animal care specialists have been working to maintain, which has been fun to see. So I love that we do stuff like this. You know, we're in aquarium, people think it's been fun to see.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

No, it's fun that as an aquarium, you know, we we are doing things like that, things that we wouldn't necessarily think of. Like, yeah, we do have a native garden um in our front plaza, and then also by the watershed where we have a little butterfly garden.

SPEAKER_04 36:07

The native garden, is that where we got all our hummingbirds living at? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's that's pretty dope. You you come into work and you get to the the staff door and you got a couple of hummingbirds just to chilling. Yeah. They looking at you like, yeah, I saw you yesterday. He's cool, he's gonna be a good thing. He can't worry about you at all. Like you're supposed to be here five minutes ago.

SPEAKER_02 36:27

No, it is it is a really magical place to work because not only do we have the animals inside, we are so um thoughtful about the animals outside of the aquarium and and who comes to visit us. And it's it's really special to walk up to work and be like, oh, that's the hummingbird that said hi to me yesterday. There he is perched, and oh, there's the the butterflies that are hanging out around here.

SPEAKER_03 36:47

I just remembered there's this like a little juvenile squirrel that's been a little bit more. Hey, I'll talk about him too. I'm gonna talk about him too. We all know they're like the same squirrel. He's in the service yard.

SPEAKER_04 36:56

Because it's like he pops up like he's like literally telling you stuff. Like, is you finished? Can I go now?

SPEAKER_03 37:01

And he's like running through the yard, and like he is not scared of people, and so you if you're not looking, you could accidentally like I don't know that he would get to the point, but he'll be like right underfoot and like running in between, you know, like, dude, what's going on?

SPEAKER_04 37:13

But getting to where he's going.

SPEAKER_02 37:15

He's happy, he's happy. That's amazing. Happy little squirrel. Well, we have some questions from social media for you. Um, we wanted to know what are the best parts of your job and maybe some of the most frustrating parts.

SPEAKER_04 37:26

The best parts of my job is being able to create, um, constantly being able to create. That's a big thing with me. Um, I was big on like artist type stuff when I was in high school. Did drafting because I got to see, got to draw out how structures were. Um gravitated to tools um since the age of eight. And so I've always been trying to build things. And so um, I still buy Legos to this day, and I won't tell you my age, but um up there. So that's like one of the best things. And I and frustrating, um I don't really let my work frustrate me. I try not to move too fast and I don't move slow and I move methodically.

SPEAKER_02 38:11

Well, it kind of seems like if there is a frustrating aspect of your job, you fix it. Yeah, so it's no longer frustrating, and in process, probably alleviate the frustration for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_04 38:20

Where there should be something that's frustrating somebody else, and then now I take it upon myself to let me end that frustration because it's not mine's, but yeah, it's it's it's in my realm of fixing.

SPEAKER_02 38:31

Um, maybe we touched on this already. What are your hours like? Are you always on call?

SPEAKER_04 38:36

Um, well, after my latest promotion, now I'm an at-home call me guy.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Oh, very cool.

SPEAKER_04 38:44

Because of our uh chiller plant um that maintains the temp for the whole building, all the tanks, all theirs, everything. Um it's like graveyard shift, and we don't have too many people here, maybe one or two people from life support. Life support is not responsible for maintaining our chillers and the chiller plant and the boiler plant. Um, but they have to have a little bit of awareness so when stuff happens, you can be talked through it over the phone. And as far as the hours, um, I do at this point, I do whatever hours necessary to get stuff done. Yeah. And so I could have literally a six-day, 58-hour week, and then a 43-hour week. Um people think I probably do more of the 58 hours. Like, you're never at home because I always see you here. They come back, they go home and come back with friends when they're off. You're still here. You're still here.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

Yeah, no, we're so lucky to have someone like you that's so dedicated, people like you that care.

SPEAKER_03 39:37

Um you maintain all of the like guest-facing things, but also so much of the support structure for the animals to survive. And that is so much work to do. And it's it's such it's work that like when it's done well, you don't notice that it's being done. And I think that that's that's what I try and do. Yeah, I know that you've helped build the infrastructure for a lot of the projects that I personally get a chance to work on, and a lot of the infrastructure that supports so many of our conservation efforts, like the Sea Otter surrogacy pools and that area. You built the entire floors and stairs and decking and all of that that allows us to walk around.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

That was pretty cool when you were learning how to do stuff that you never did before, like in your mind, you understand all of it, the whole process, but you never did it. And so I was just like, Well, I understand all this, I can cut all this material, I can do all of this. So just because I haven't done this before doesn't mean I can't. And so I just I put all kind of brain cells, skin tissue. Um the same thing like you said about surgacing, yeah, then the platform floor you see and the penguins.

SPEAKER_03 40:43

Yeah, that was really cool.

SPEAKER_04 40:45

With the door. Um, like I said, I like building, and this gives me being in facilities, this gives me opportunities just to build. I never know what I'm gonna build next. Yeah, and that's that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 40:55

You may have answered this in all of those examples, but do you have a favorite project that you've worked on?

SPEAKER_04 41:02

Favorite project. Well, I would say the the floor and penguins because I was just given a picture and was like, Can you do this?

SPEAKER_03 41:20

My boss gave you a picture that he drew, I'm sure, on a napkin and said, Well, no, well, to his credit, he was on the computer.

SPEAKER_04 41:28

The picture looked clean.

SPEAKER_03 41:29

It was a sketch up.

SPEAKER_04 41:30

Oh but there was no measurements, there was no nothing. Now it's just I looked and I said, okay, what do I have to match what I'm looking at? And then I told him, okay, I can build it. He was like, You sure? I was like, Yeah, and I just went around the yard, called a few people, started gathering all this material, start measuring stuff out. Then Brett came back and he said, I know I should have asked you to go. He says, I come, I give you an idea, and then you take everything in my idea, and then you just make it better by adding all this other stuff. Um, and to me, it just it just came out. It just came out dark. It's one of the the way it's leveled and the way all the pieces can move so it doesn't get as cloggy and dirty with the feathers from the penguins. Um the drain line is now the uh three layers of PVC that's removable instead of rusty, I mean metal that can rest up on you. Yeah. So I was thinking of all this stuff to make this better, this better, that better, that better. And I haven't been back there since.

SPEAKER_03 42:30

Yeah, you haven't needed to, because you haven't, yeah, you haven't. You did it perfect. That's pretty cool. I mean, well for anyone who is this is the penguin's behind-the-scenes area, and this is not the front-facing area. So this is where we would sometimes do encounters and where we would take penguins back if we had them, you know, separated for health reasons or breeding season. And the area was fine, but it had not been reimagined or redesigned since our penguin habitat was built. And when you have animals in a space, you very quickly learn what doesn't work. And it's not always easy to totally redo a space. And so there was a deck area that was just it would just get dirty really quickly because penguins poop a lot when you're holding them back there. And it turns out there wasn't really a great way to rinse that down without having to rip everything up, and it was just a lot of work to keep that area the way that we needed it to. And so when Mike redid it, it everything is just like easily removable pieces, and it is almost like Lego. You can put it back together very readily, you can clean under it, you can rinse all of those poops and fetters. It doesn't feel like it's dirty, you know, like and weirdly, the best part doesn't smell like penguin, which I love penguins. I don't love the smell of penguins.

SPEAKER_02 43:41

We just recorded with Rachel about our diving episode and her um least favorite exhibit to dive in is penguins because of the penguins. Penguin scent. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_04 43:52

Yeah. I was in there for a few weeks.

SPEAKER_03 43:54

Mike's like unfamiliar.

SPEAKER_04 43:56

No, you know, tell Rachel I know about that live. They're really, really cute, but they do. I like those birds because they're cool. Yeah, they are cool. They're they're curious and they they're nice for the most part.

SPEAKER_03 44:07

For the most part. For the most part. They can be finicky sometimes, but for the most part.

SPEAKER_04 44:11

Have things to keep their attention, like keychains.

SPEAKER_03 44:14

Anything shiny. They're like a little kid. They're like, wow. Me too. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

Just dangle something sparkly in front of them. I'm ever being rude to you, just dangle something. But that's awesome. Well, thank you so much, Mike, for joining us today on Aquarium of the Pod Civic. This has been so insightful. The Pod Civic.

SPEAKER_03 44:31

And thanks for fixing everything that I break.

SPEAKER_04 44:33

You know, it's okay. I didn't build the first iteration of it, and that's why you couldn't lean on it. And that's why I felt Alex Aaron through that.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

Well, thank you, Mike. I really appreciate your time. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_04 44:43

Appreciate you guys having me on the podcast. Um, yeah. Come to the aquarium and come check us out. Um, you might be lucky. You might be one of the lucky people to see me. And I can give you a partial tour while I'm in the middle of doing a build.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Yeah. Come look at this project. If you have a problem at home where you need a blueprint, just come find Mike. I'm not above that.

SPEAKER_04 45:08

It already gets there.

SPEAKER_03 45:10

Yeah. I have definitely already asked. I think I broke my washing machine at one point and then I fixed it myself. And then the next day I told Mike, I was like, I fixed my washing machine myself. Just so proud because I was like, you fix things. I can fix things. You'll understand how hard that was. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:23

So cool.

SPEAKER_04 45:23

So you guys have a good one. And thank you.

SPEAKER_02 45:25

Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Mike. All right. Boom. We are getting out of heel. Do you have time to record intros or do we have a I have till four? So I would like to. Even if we can just reset the deal.

SPEAKER_04 45:37

You want beatbox on your intro? All right, let's go.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

Can you?

SPEAKER_02 45:46

We're putting it in, Mike! That's gonna be in it for sure.

SPEAKER_03 45:50

Oh, that's so cool. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Mike. All right, welcome back to the Podcific. Today we have on Reed Edwards. Reed, what is your job title here at the aquarium?

SPEAKER_00 46:02

I'm a life support technician, uh tech technician three.

SPEAKER_03 46:06

Technician three. Three levels. So that's the highest level of life support technician.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

Right, yeah, we start at one. Okay. So or a senior.

SPEAKER_03 46:13

Senior life support technician. So what is a life support technician? What do you do?

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Everything is the short answer. Um I like to compare us to the mechanical side of husbandry. So we focus on everything mechanical that helps keep the animals alive and thriving. Um so the heat, um heating, cooling for the tanks, the filtration, ozone, um, pH levels we we contribute. Um those are kind of our main focuses. Then builds, install, repair, whatever needs to be done.

SPEAKER_03 46:47

Yeah, you're basically keeping the environment for the animals comfortable and within like what they can live in, and that can include like chilling water or heating things up, and um the ozone always freaks me out a little bit because I don't fully understand how it works what it does. So, what does ozone do?

SPEAKER_00 47:03

Okay, so yeah, I mean to begin with, uh ozone freaks me out a little bit too. We're very careful with ozone. Ozone is um an O3 molecule, okay? So oxygen is O2. Um, we run um air through machines that actually um break up the oxygen molecules and recombine them. There's some chemistry or physics or whatever that I don't know, but make them an O3. So it's a super unstable, stable molecule. We push that through a reaction chamber um away from our animals.

SPEAKER_03 47:36

That's important.

SPEAKER_00 47:36

Yeah, it is important because what ozone actually does is it attaches to the cells of the stuff that we don't want in the water and destroys the cells, okay, because it's unstable. And then we so we go through a process um where we have a huge tower for our big systems, we inject the ozone, we run it at a higher level that would be safe for the animals in the water, and then it goes through another tower where we call degas. The good thing about ozone, it's super unstable. It does not want to be O3, it wants to be O2. So it's really easy to bring it back. So we run it through one tower and we run it through another tower, and then we put it into the um system. So we're cleaning the bulk of our cleaning is in the first tower where we're injecting it, and then we have a um therapeutic level, I guess, of cleaning in the tank. And ozone, we measure it through ORP, um, oxygen reduction potential. So, like the seawater has a natural oxygen reduction ORP of 350 millivolts. So um we'll target the tanks kind of there depending on the animal sensitivity. So, like our mammals, we could run higher than like our sharks.

SPEAKER_03 48:43

That's fair.

SPEAKER_02 48:44

The mammals are pretty hardy.

SPEAKER_00 48:45

Yeah, but they're not as sensitive.

SPEAKER_02 48:47

I feel like my eyes are just like, whoa.

unknown 48:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Yeah. And they're not as sensitive.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:53

So and then we monitor that all the time. We monitor the water in the system and we monitor it's in it in the um towers, and we have thresholds, and if it goes out of range, it automatically turns off. It also alerts us um if there's a problem so we could respond.

SPEAKER_03 49:09

It's pretty cool that everything can be so automated and like, hey, within these parameters, okay, but outside of that turn off or notify someone to pay attention to something.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

Yeah, I mean everything that is important to the animals is automated.

SPEAKER_03 49:22

Yeah. And for that reason, you guys have pretty long hours, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:26

Yeah, yeah. So we're here 24-7, um, 365.

SPEAKER_03 49:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 49:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:32

I think that's something people don't always realize is that the systems maintenance takes even more time and commitment than the animal husbandry maintenance can. Because like I'm here usually eight hours a day. Sometimes I have longer shifts if there's needs for animals to, you know, I'm acclimating a tadpole, something like that. But someone needs to be here in case something goes wrong 24 hours a day. And so you guys have graveyard shifts. I've come in at three in the morning and there's life support people here still working. And it's cool to see, but also those must be some pretty long hours. Do you typically get anything going wrong in the middle of the night?

SPEAKER_00 50:08

I used to say it comes in clusters for me. I when I was on graveyards, it was like it would be quiet for a long time. So then you take this role. We have main ongoing maintenance, we flush out tanks, clean whatever it is. Um, and then part of your shift is just being there in case something goes wrong. A pump decides it doesn't want to work anymore or whatever it is. Um, and it was like a cluster. You'd go months and it was quiet, and you kind of have it easy, get your stuff done, and then all of a sudden everything would fall apart. So, and we do layers, so we have one to two people on for graveyard shift from 8 30 p.m. till 5 30 a.m.

SPEAKER_01 50:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

There's at least one person all the time, no matter what. And quite often now we have two people with them, but the supervisor and the manager are also on call. So um, if they get into a situation they can't diagnose or fix, then they call the bosses. And sometimes it's just over the phone, hey, do this, do that. You know, typically our graveyard are our newer people. So sometimes it's just a matter of they've never seen it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:12

So they don't understand how you have to be here a long time to oh, just do this, wiggle this, it'll be fine.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

Yeah, I mean, there's been plenty of times. I I when I was on grave, I'd call, you know, the supervisor and be like, oh, it's all falling apart. And then they're like, Well, do that. Or I'd even, there's times as I got more experience, it'd be like, Oh, I'm sorry I called you. I just realized I actually know. But it's scary in the moment, yeah. Of course.

SPEAKER_02 51:36

And there's so much writing on it too. And I'm sure I'm sure like all of our all of the leadership there is on the same page, you know, like much rather would receive a call in the middle of the night than something catastrophic happens.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

Yeah, I've never, to their credit, you know, um, at two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, whatever it is, um, I've never had them say, Why did you call me for that? It's it's like, you know, okay, you know, we worked it out, you know, the animals, yeah. Yeah, black back to sleep or not sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 52:05

Or I'll come in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:06

Yeah, the animals' health and safety is is what we do. So if it means someone gets a little less sleep, then that's what it means.

SPEAKER_03 52:13

Yeah, it's worth it. I like the description of it being sort of the mechanical side of husbandry because it really is like it's maintaining everything that allows us to have animals that are healthy and happy and function the way that they're supposed to, and have an environment that is kind of matching what they're supposed to. Yeah. What made you want to work in life support at the aquarium or at an aquarium?

SPEAKER_00 52:34

Yeah, so that's kind of interesting. I worked in the hobby for a very long time.

SPEAKER_01 52:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Um, mostly part-time, and I'm actually um half a semester away from a teaching credential.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

Ooh, I know that.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

Yeah, I thought that was my path. And I was working at the time part-time and finishing up school.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:55

And my oldest child um was in kindergarten.

SPEAKER_01 53:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

And he had a little girlfriend.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Cute.

SPEAKER_00 53:04

We got to know the mom, and the dad wasn't there. Uh, he had been gone for a long time, and he came home one day and she ran up. And I heard he was a sailor, but he had a huge beard, and it's like I said his kind of a smart comment about I didn't know they let you wear beards like that in the Navy. Fortunately, he was a smart aleck like me, and he made something back. And it turns out he had just finished a tour doing um running underwater robotics, wow, exploring like ecosystems, whatever. And he had started working here in life support and graveyard. But he ended up getting a job in Monterey.

SPEAKER_03 53:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:38

And he came so he got the job in Monterey and he came up to my one day and said, Hey, I'm leaving. You love the stuff, go apply. So I applied and I didn't get the job. Josh, my supervisor, actually got the job, and then I got a call eight months later and said, Hey, we have an opening. And then I started not sleeping for five years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:00

Well, you've worked here for seven, as I understand it. So the last two years you've been getting some sleep. Yeah. What's changing?

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Well, so in life support, because you know, graveyard's not a whole lot of fun. You start on graves and you kind of bide your time. Um, and then as openings come, you take them. With my family schedule with kids and stuff, I kind of stayed a little longer than most people do. Yeah. Um, but then I was able to go to days, so now I'm on excuse me, what we call X shift. I'm on our coverage shift. So I get some flexibility um with scheduling, but I also help cover when people are out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:39

I feel like you're here all the time.

SPEAKER_00 54:41

With the gallery, I was here a lot.

unknown 54:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:44

Um, what did you like about Graveyard Shift? Having kind of the place to yourself?

SPEAKER_00 54:49

Yeah. You know, it's it's it it is kind of nice once you get used to it. Honestly, they um my team had a bet that I was going to quit the first three months. Really? Yeah, yeah. I was dressed out seven years later. I had kids to feed, so I think that was the biggest thing. It's stressful because you get your training and and at some point you have to be by yourself. Yeah, they just leave you alone. Right. And so now you have this building with all the animals, and it's you and a couple security guards.

SPEAKER_01 55:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:20

And so it was it was really stressful for quite a while, and then I got used to it, and it is nice in a lot of ways to have the building to yourself. You know, it is really kind of cool to go and look at the exhibits on your downtime when the animals are, you know, in a state you don't normally see them.

SPEAKER_03 55:37

Do you see them? Have you ever seen them doing something that like we don't typically observe during the day, like nocturnal animals or what are like what are our otters doing at night? Just hitting stuff on the wall?

SPEAKER_00 55:48

Yeah, some or sleeping. I mean, for the most part, they would just kind of be hanging out on the beach. Um, when we started getting the younger ones for a while, we uh for a while there we were feeding them with the those tubes passing them through. So that was really cool.

SPEAKER_03 56:02

Yeah, it was nice to have someone who was, you know, had some training in what they were doing and helping to offer the really young otters food at like two in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 56:10

Yeah, so we were doing um on graveyards, you you do two sets of rounds. So right roughly right when you start, usually about nine o'clock, you start it and you walk the whole building checking every system, every major system makes sure everything's good. And then at two o'clock you do the rounds on the we call them focus rounds. It's the smaller systems. Um, you know, there's not a necessarily a gallon size defining which ones are which, but you check those. So that's when we'd feed the otters, and they'd hear that door open. And they knew they'd be on the the crew, like just banging on there, you know, like breakfast, 2 a.m.

SPEAKER_03 56:48

breakfast.

SPEAKER_00 56:48

Yeah, so snack.

SPEAKER_03 56:50

Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 56:51

Yeah, it was pretty cool. And I mean, and I get to say I fed sea otters, and nobody not many people have done that.

SPEAKER_03 56:55

So really not very many at all. And it was I it was super nice for us because at the time we didn't have as established of a night shift or practice for that. And so we had people who could be trained and were here, and I don't know, it was really, really nice to have sort of an interdepartmental like, hey, we can rely on these people to do this thing if they're already here doing that. Um and as we learned in our otter episodes, otters be eaten. They're gonna be so much no matter what time of day you walked in there with something. So that was really helpful. That's awesome. Um my next question is what kinds of skills and expertise are required to work as a life support technician? Like, what did you come in with?

SPEAKER_00 57:31

You know, I I've said before, like you need to be able to hold a wrench and be willing to learn. There's it's it's not our skill set is very diverse. Um, it helps to have like an understanding of water chemistry and what's going on biologically or chemically. Um and you know, it helps to have a basic understanding of how filtration works, but I've learned so much. I mean, I used to install aquariums on the side for people, and it is so different, you know. Um so, and part of it is just like like the plumbing size. It used to be like two inch, now we do six inch and you know, four inch, whatever. And it's different working with that. But I I think being willing to learn and having a little kind of just hands-on mechanical experience, you know, not being afraid to use a wrench or a saw or whatever. So I yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:25

It feels like a lot of on-the-job learning, really. And like I see people who come in and they don't have a ton of experience, but then you know, a couple months later I see them doing these incredibly complex things that I can't imagine myself doing, although I can hold a wrench and I am willing to learn. And Reed has taught me how to do a lot of stuff at the frog areas, so I can stop calling him all the time when I have frog problems. Um, cool. Well, here's something that I keep hearing people describe like the aquarium is we call it a closed system. What is a closed system? Like, what does that mean for us?

SPEAKER_00 58:56

Well, we do um so they have some aquariums, and I'm not really familiar with it, where they kind of do a flow through. So they're kind of doing a constant, they're constantly bringing in like new seawater.

SPEAKER_01 59:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 59:09

And and I think that's the primary thing they're talking about. Um, and uh they're constantly kind of bringing the new seawater, so they're constantly doing like a water change on their system. Okay at varying rates.

SPEAKER_03 59:20

Uh I know so they're like just part of the ocean essentially. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:25

And there's there's some filtration going out that they have to do, and there's some things. Um I I've talked to some colleagues that work on those trying to understand it better. Yeah, they don't fully know. But with us as a closed system, every one of our systems is isolated from the other system. Okay. They are not connected in any shape. We might have a drain line that they go to that is connected, but we make sure that there's no way, even on that drain line, that water can't get back in. So everyone operates by itself. You know, you might have a few like um the Jules tank in SoCal has the new gallery, has um four or five tanks off of one kind of common sum.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:04

So you might see that, but that's still we consider that one system. Yeah. I think they would too on the husbander side.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:10

So that's interesting. So all the water chemistry for those tanks is the same because it's the same water, but at the aquarium everything is sort of operated as individual little systems, which I'm sure means a lot more checking up on things and maintenance in general, of like needing to know which system needs what, and everything is a little bit different.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:28

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:29

That's interesting. Is there, and I have a feeling I know the answer to this. We are located on the water. If you guys have ever been to the aquarium of the Pacific, um, why don't we use our ocean water just from the ocean right offshore? Here in Long Beach. Here in Long Beach Long Harbor.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

Yeah, so we do actually in in two ways. Uh we buy water.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

Um who buys it?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:54

How do we buy it?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:55

The aquarium buys there's a company uh and they pump water in and they filter the water, and then they bring it over on a truck. You see the truck on the side of the road multiple times a day, and they pump water into our reservoirs.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:07

That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:08

So for the building has two reservoirs built in at capacity, I think we could hold 240,000 gallons.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:14

Do you know offhand how many gallons total all of the systems together can hold at the aquarium?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:21

It's changed. We're I think we're a million one or a million two.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:27

Okay, so we could fill a quarter of the exhibits with a full reservoir, essentially. That's interesting. What's the biggest system here at the aquarium?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:35

It's drop trop reef.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:36

Yeah, that makes sense. So yeah. Why did I even ask if it's a huge?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

Yeah, Trop Reef is 335 to 350 somewhere in there.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:44

Wow, I think we say 350.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:45

Yeah, 350. And then um predators is the next is 180, I believe.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:52

Off the top of my head.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

Predators and seals are pretty close.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:57

Seals and sealants is a big exhibit too. What type of filtration do you do for a 350-gallon tropic exhibit?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:04

So it's not too different than anything. It's the same as most everyone. It's just massive sand filters. So um we are so basically all the systems we run, uh, we're pump, we're pulling water out of the tank and pushing it through our filter or our pumps and into the filters, into the sand filters. Uh the water comes in the top of the sand filter on a spray bar, it goes through the sand, and then out. There's another essentially spray bar, they're called laterals, but on the bottom, and then that goes back, it's all pressurized and it goes back through into the system. So that's the main uh the ozones actually consider filtration. And then um every major exhibit has a protein skimmer on it as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:57

And the stuff from a protein skimmer we talked about before is called skimmate. Look at us knowing things about protein skimming. The foamy brown stuff that comes out. So what is when you have a protein skimmer and you have skimmate, what's that comprised of?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

Okay, so a protein skimmer technically is a foam fractionator.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:16

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:17

Yeah, fancy words.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:19

Sounds like something for coffee, but it's definitely.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:21

Yeah, no, you don't want to put that in your coffee. Um so what a protein skimmer does is you're injecting air, you're mixing air and water together to get a micro bubble, a super fine bubble, and that bubble is picking up the proteins. It clings to the proteins. Like, think about when you walk on the beach and you have that foam, it's the same thing. The crashing of the waves does the same thing. So we're replicating that in a controlled area so we can pull that protein out because when protein breaks down, it turns into ammonia and then nitrite, nitrate. None of that's super great for our tanks. Got it. Um, so we're trying to eliminate some of that before it breaks down. Cool. And so that's what skim aid is is protein and salt water and bubbles.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:04

Yeah, don't bother my coffee. Yeah, you don't want that in the same way. I just don't want the salt water. Protein I could use.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:11

I don't think you want that protein.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:12

Not that protein protein. That's fair. So with that, like there are some really, really big exhibits. Are there some exhibits that maybe even aren't that big but are more difficult to maintain? And what might what might make something harder or easier to maintain?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:26

I mean, from our perspective, it I think it's probably the frequency of work. Otters like to eat. And so you know what comes with that? It's not even that, it's the it's the shells, it's the enrichment. So that gets caught to protect our pumps. We have baskets on the front that catch big debris so that we're not destroying multi-thousand dollar pumps every other day. And multi-thousand, even five-figure multi-thousand, yeah, um, depend on the system. So we catch those, and as those get included, uh the water stops moving, yeah, which is not good for anybody. So then we have to go out and clean it out.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:04

They shed a lot because they have people don't realize that they shed.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:08

I I think that surprised me honestly when I first so like on our big otters exhibit, the main exhibit, those get cleaned, those baskets get cleaned twice a week.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:17

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:17

With the backwashes. And those are um almost three feet long and what eight inches diameter. They're substantial. Yeah. And I think that's what surprised me the most is how much they shed.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:30

Yeah, it's all hair in there.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:31

Oh my gosh. It's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:32

It's impressive.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:34

Our my shower drain would not be long. It's already struggling.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:38

We're like rinsing down the deck in there, and it will just hair will come off the walls. You're like, you've never been this high up on the wall. How did your hair maybe it's like a shower where they like pull it out and they stick it on the wall like one of those?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:49

Well, because how hairy are there? They're a million hairs per square.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:53

I hear the figure that people will say is like if you imagined a golden retriever, which I always imagine because I have one, um, and then you Shave that golden. I specifically imagine my golden retriever, and then you shave them and you condense all of the hair on that dog to one square inch. That's how dense sea otter fur is. And it's so dense because their skin can't ever get wet or else they get really cold. But it also means that they are shedding so many hairs all the time. Think about my dog shedding, and then I'm like, imagine there was just so many of my dog in my house and how much hair that would be. So thankfully a lot of it takes place in the water, thankfully for me, but not thankfully for Reed, who then has to go clean out on some air.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:32

Yeah, not as much now that I'm not in graveyard.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:34

It's true. I think something that maybe gets overlooked is life support equipment is very, very expensive.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:40

Yeah, it can be. It's it's because we have um some of it's because we have parameters. Like our big pumps are cast fiberglass. You know, we can't we have to be very careful with metals because saltwater is so corrosive. So I mean, there at some point we have to have metal, but then we try and protect it, and then we use very high grade um stainless steel every time we can because it will break down so I have to think a lot of your job is like things actively working against you.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:08

When you put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:10

Yeah, I mean, saltwater is corrosive, it's going to break down everything we do at some point. Yeah. But you know. That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:18

Well, I uh also have heard that when we are getting our salt water, sometimes the intake is from the river and you have to clean out the screens to prevent, you know, there's screens to prevent all this weird stuff from getting into the saltwater. What are some of the weirdest things you found cleaning those screens out there?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:34

The screens themselves are usually just like muddy gross and we might have some crustacean or something on there that we try and return to their environment.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:43

Go home.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:44

But you know, I mean it it's sitting in in the river harbor water and in that detritus mud for um so and the screens are um they're not like a window screen, right? They're what are they, about six foot long, four foot tall. Oh wow. And they're all stainless steel, and they're ribbed with um they're stainless steel and um it's like a PVC board starboard to kind of give the structure, but the screen itself kind of looks like the radiator in your car.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:16

Okay, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:17

So it's really small, fine things. So and they're uh 150, 200 pounds. They're not easy to be clean, not fun. But so we have to pull those out. So we find that it's mostly in the river. We find things like we had one time we were working down, it's under a um a pier, and we're working there, and there was like this abandoned doll.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:39

Oh, it's so scary already. I don't like it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:41

Yeah, just like sitting there staring at us the whole time. It was kind of on the rock on the jetty work, but it was just kind of like floating there by. Oh, I don't like yeah, it was not. It was kind of a little, you know. I mean, and you yeah, kind of just sitting there with its eyes staring at you.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:56

Just like one eye close. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:59

I mean, you know, it made it entertaining.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:01

Hello, Reed. Hello, don't touch my screens, Reed.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:05

My screens.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:06

Well, that's horrifying. That was not the story I wanted to get.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:09

And those screens get changed, so there's four screens. I mean, to understand how much buildup it is. We have I'm sorry, there's eight screens, four sides on a box, and those every six months we do screens, but we do one side at a time. So by the time we get to them, they've been in the water for over a year.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:26

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:27

So they're they're they're yakky. They're funky. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:31

And there's little dolls watching you.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:32

And there's dolls watching you.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:35

Okay, my I wanted to know, and it sounds like I already know, what is your favorite animal at the aquarium? And then what is your least favorite animal to take care of from a life support perspective?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:46

Yeah, I mean, I I guess the because of the frequency of maintenance, the otters are the ones that are I'll say most complained about.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:54

Fair.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:54

Um, or are most complained about.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:57

Um I'm gonna tell them. Oh, the otters?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:00

Oh, they know. We've complained openly to the otters.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:04

As you're feeding them, please stop shoving things down the room.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:07

That's one of the beauties of graveyard. You could complain out loud. That's true. You know they don't mind. But um, yeah. I mean, yeah, uh Aaron knows I have affinity for the frogs. Which frogs, Reed? Well, the mountain frogs.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:17

Yes, thank you. That's what I needed to hear.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:20

Next episode we'll hear all about the mountain yellow-legged frogs.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:22

Our um season finale is going to be a highlight on the conservation work that we do with mountain yellow legged frogs. But something that people might not know is that Reed actually, with some help, obviously, built those systems from scratch all by himself. That was fun. Which was really cool to watch and sort of be a part of. And now every time I have questions, I'm like, Reed, what happened? What's going on? What does this valve do? And how can like I turned it slightly weirdly. And so it's really nice to have someone who has that much insight into what that system's supposed to look like here on site. Because there'll be times where someone bumps something and the flow is just almost too low for the chiller to function. That was last week, and and then we fixed it because Reed thankfully knows exactly which valve got bumped and knows what everything's supposed to look like. So um, yeah, you built an entire room for endangered frogs.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:11

Yeah, I that's the cool part of the job. Yeah. Right? I mean, I mean, there's there's the bragging part, like I did that. But it's cool that I'm actually returning, helping, like helping a bigger thing, right? I mean, and it it's me, but it's my team.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:25

I work with amazing people. I'm I'm really honored to do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:29

It's true. It was always fun when the project was like sort of being built and the room was being built, that I would come in sometimes and then you guys would just be like, you know, working together and like having a good time in there. And I was like, can I come in? I can't help at all, but can I do it together? And then we had our third system come up and running, and so you guys were working in there. It's really nice in there. It is probably some of the clean, like I could never plumb anything that cleanly, but you can tell that like from its inception, just so well planned. And I attribute a lot of the success of that project to all of the work that Life Support did to make that room so successful. And the maintenance never ends, a little less than honors, but um we have like our RO system and our DI systems that those membranes need to get replaced all of the time later today when they come in. And yeah, I mean we have really clean water in there. They have UV sterilizers on them, they have chillers that are up in the attic, and it draws a lot of power, electricity, just to keep everything cold. It's like 90 degrees outside today, and the frogs are chilling in there at 60 degrees with water that's 50. And I'm like, it must be nice. What a life.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:35

I think it's great. You know, that's so much care and thought put into something that our public will never see. They'll never be able to go into that room. They can go in there. I'll make sure that someone sees it. Virtual tour.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:46

There we go. That's fine. Um Welcome to my cribs, mountain frog cribs. Can we do that? We'll have to do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:52

Can we do a TikTok near you?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:54

Well, I wanted to touch a little bit on the Southern California gallery. And essentially the aquarium turned 25 this year. And does that mean that some of our infrastructure and our plumbing is also 25 years old? And what does that mean for you? Older. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:09

Yeah, well, I mean, I I guess depending on because they started building before 25, yeah. And and had water in. I wasn't around, so I don't know how they brought that up.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:19

I didn't work here 26 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:20

I I was yeah. Um, but yeah, it is older. It's so yeah, with age, like an old car, everything, things need repair and update and and stuff. But then we have a lot of stuff. Like the aquarium, one of the things we do, um, we invest in quality um plumbing and pumps and in our valves. But if you go on Trop, we were talking about the tropical exhibit, Big Trop. I don't we have 30 names for it because it's been around forever. Trop reef, I think. Trap reef, big trop, all the trops. And and from the life support perspective, every system has a number.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:56

And so Do you know them by like I know all the major systems, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:01

What's otters?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:01

Otters 341.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:03

What's drop?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:04

Drop is 443.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:05

What's penguins?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:06

Penguins is two six one.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:07

This is my favorite game to play with everyone. I did this with Josh Wagner on the scientific names of all the jellies, but it's so funny to me when people have this like incredibly niche knowledge that no one else has, and then they just know it like right there.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:19

You're like, I don't know what those numbers mean. No, you know them.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:21

I but it's so quickly. You could also be lying, and I would have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:25

Well, you could you could fact check me, but yeah, I can be lying.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:28

So it's like I was, and I was.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:30

Yeah. No, the all the tropical galleries are 400s.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:34

All the northern galleries are three hundreds, all the SoCal galleries are two hundreds.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:38

Does mountain frogs have a number?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:39

Um no.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:42

We just covered Mountain Frog number one.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:44

M Y L F one, M Y L F two. So because those correspond to points on our um Siemens server on our computer, how and our monitoring system. So we can't, I mean, well, I guess we can, but none of us want to type out tropical degrees flow, filter flow, which is one of the things we monitor all the time. So um it so we mon it's 443, you know, so we get we monitor by or get a notification of there's an issue. 443, it will say like FF4430, in which case it means there's no flow going through tropical reef. It means there's something wrong, and we need to go figure out why.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:27

You know how like in movies and TV shows when you see someone in like a security office and it's like all the screens up, that's what I imagine you guys doing with all of the different like data points for like flow, temperature, all those things.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:38

It is so um, I mean, so the the technician on duty, uh depending on the shift, right? Um carries a phone, has a phone that's attached to our Siemens server, our Siemens computer. And then throughout the day they get notifications for multiple, you know, uh temperatures. If a temperature is um most of our temperatures are set up so anything more than two degrees above or below what we tell the computer we want that temperature to be, it's going to tell us that there's a problem. Um then filter flows, depending on the system and sensitivities and whatnot, um, it's the same thing. We say, okay, you know, normally this runs at whatever 200 gallons a minute. So if you get to 150, there's a problem, tell us. Or if you get to 300, there's a problem, tell us. Um and then a lot of them also the levels, if the level's too low or whatever. So the technician on duty, the primary, will have that phone and they get notifications throughout the day. On top of that, we have a computer and and you go into the graphics page, and we could bring up any system in the building and take a look at it and at the minimum know how much flow is going through it and what temperature it is.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:50

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:51

So larger and more complex, then it gets more and more.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:55

More and more things. I can't tell you how many times I've done a water change with like slightly warmer water, and then someone immediately knows and calls me and it's like, what's happening out in Mount Frogs? I'm so sorry I didn't mean it. But it's awesome because if something was going wrong, that would be constantly. But then usually if I forget to tell you guys I'm doing that, then I'm just like, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to worry anyone about what's going on up here.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:16

Yeah, and we adjust the thresholds based on the sensitivity of the animals, right? Some are going to handle a little better.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:22

Or like a mammal is gonna be just fine. Yeah, you know, I mean, if they I think uh seals is like 62, I think is our we call it set point, our target temperature. So, you know, seals is at 64 for a little bit. They're whatever. Um, but the mountain frogs, especially because they're so at risk, yeah. We we monitor them pretty closely.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:42

Very closely.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:44

And I'm so sorry for all the times you've had to go.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:46

You're not the only one.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:48

Aaron, what's going on? I'm like, I'm sorry, I was doing a water change and I forgot. Um well, I know that we just reopened, or we just reopened, I guess is true. Reopened, reimagined. Reimagined our Southern California gallery. Um, what involvement did you have in construction of the new gallery?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:04

Uh wow. Um, so this was it was kind of fun, on honestly. Um, this was the first time I got a design um not design the tank, right? So I was given um the tank parameters for um, I think Beauty in the Deep is the name of it. I was given the tank parameters, so how many gallons? Um, what if they were going to run a sump, and then they it was like, okay, now make it work. So we went out, and it's not just me, it's you know, sitting down with the team and conversations, and so we start to figure out how much flow we need to run through there. Um on our perspective, a lot of that flow is how much do we need to turn over that tank to properly filter it, right? Um, so you know, those animals that happens to be a uh a coral tank, so they need a little bit more flow, but our focus on that is mostly like how much do we need to turn on a filter? And then whatever, you know, there was some request um for some components from the husbandry team. So they gave it to us, and then we start with a line drawing. So we literally take a piece of paper paper and map the way our um the water is going to flow through the tank, through the filters, through the pump. Well, it's tank pumps, filter. Um that one has a bio tower and a protein skimmer, um, and then back into the tank. So we we just it's it's not like okay, in three feet we're gonna do that. It's just literally uh this is the route it's gonna take. And then we go into the space and start imagining what it's gonna look like and then order all our stuff. So we did that. Um I was kind of asked to lead that tank. Um and then Neil led the oil grass, uh, one of our other tech three, and Josh, our supervisor, did the um oil rig, is I think it's the same. And then uh seagrass marine meadow meadows is the name. Josh led that one. So, and when you do the big build, you kind of need a point person. Yeah, like we definitely work together, yeah. Like we all complement each other, um but you need the point person to have a vision.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:17

So we did that, we ordered our components, um, most of them anyway. And then when the tanks got here, started putting them together. I mean, attaching things, gluing it together, yeah, um laying it out, trying to figure out how it works and so how to get really big tanks into really small spaces. How to get really big, heavy tanks into really small spaces.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:39

I heard with the eelgrass tank in particular that um there was once it was sort of in the building, getting it onto where it was going to eventually sit was interesting. I heard that involved some soap.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:52

There was some soap. What happened there? Yeah, so um marine meadows is the new name, right? Um that tank's 30 feet long. Yeah, it's a big tank. I think five feet wide. It's it is it's amazing. Um and very heavy. Yeah. So it wanted to stick to the concrete pad. So um Tom actually came up with the idea to use soap and it breaks the friction up a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:19

And so we spread soap on the concrete and then slid 3,000 pounds of tank.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:27

By, you know, you have to push it. Yeah, you get to the point where you just have to literally lean on it and push it.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:33

And it slid pretty well. I mean, you know, I tried to do slip and slide, but they said that was good.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:38

Beautiful, beautiful exhibit. Definitely. I heard about kind of getting it in there, and it seems like it was well worth it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:44

Yeah. I mean it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:45

A couple hours it took to scoot it in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:48

It it's like anything, you know, in the moment. Sometimes it's frustrating. Yeah, but you know, it's really cool to go back and look and see. You know, and it's not just us, it's we we got the water moving through it. Yeah, yeah. And then husbandry came through and made a beautiful exhibit. Yeah. You know.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:04

It's it's wild to think too, you know, we're an aquarium that's 25 years old. We have a couple of stories. Here we are redoing the bottom floor. Yeah. And we kind of, you know, starting over from scratch. So it's not like we could get a crane to just put a tank easily. Wouldn't that be nice? Yeah, that would have been the first round of the aquarium being built. I I think there's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:20

Sadly, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:21

No.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:21

We got a roof now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:23

Can't just knock down the sea lion tunnel to put a new tank in, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:28

Well, we did. I mean, we didn't knock it down, but when I first started, we drained that. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:32

That was when you first started.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:34

That was yeah, I was still pretty.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:36

That was in between my internship and when I got hired. And so I was an intern, I saw one exhibit, came back a few days or a few years later, and I was like, what's happening? Why is this so different in here? And that seemed like it would have been a really big project, too.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:49

Yeah, that was huge. It was kind of cool scene.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:51

It was done pretty quickly too, from what I remember. Yeah. For a whole new exhibit to be an old exhibit to be fully renovated. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:59

Yeah, that company that we contract with that does a lot of our rock work, does great work, and they move. So, but that that tunnel part is actually two pieces of acrylic.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:08

And so they had to strap it and hold it in.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:11

Because it's held by the water pressure, right? Like partially.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:14

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's designed partially to hold the water pressure, and then it's it's basically siliconed in. Yeah. So cool. In fact, that's one of the life support things is when that leaks, we have to dive.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:26

I remember. Yeah. I remember you guys diving in there, and then the sea lions were like, what is all this stuff you're doing in here? And this being a little bit of a nuisance, but that's okay. Diving's part of the job. Diving's part of life support.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:37

Yes, it is. That's awesome. Yeah, it is. Getting in there and fixing and fixing and figuring and so because silicone only lasts so long, and that's our seams. So that's one of the things that we've started to take over. Um, or they I haven't dove here yet. I just got certified and haven't had my turn yet. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:56

Madeline too. But not yet, almost. Oh, sorry, I lied.

unknown 1:23:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:00

Close.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:01

But uh that or just inspections. They do a lot of checkout dives or on occasion. They actually um husbandry has more, but they'll drill holes in in like trop.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:11

Yeah, to put the corals in the corals and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:13

So, or buff acrylic, you know. We buffed out otters when we buffed all the acrylic in otters.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:19

Yeah, in the otter, they look great. That was when we were close during COVID. We would gate the otters back and we had like several life support staff come in and it's a little raft in the guys that have seen the otter exhibit. It doesn't look like a raft will fit in there. There's just all these people on a raft just like buffing, and then as you buff, you push away from the wall, and so they have to like just keep coming back towards the acrylic. It was fun to watch. And it looked really nice for a little bit, and then the otters decided it was time to really wreak some havoc again. It still looks nicer, but man, the otters really do some damage.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:51

I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:53

And I know Reed doesn't appreciate the otters just destroying everything you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:57

Yeah, behind you just the the challenge of acrylic, it's very, very strong. Yeah, right, as far as like holding back all that water weight. It's not gonna cry. It's soft.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:09

So I mean, yeah, it it doesn't take a lot, and otters have good nails. Our sea lions do it too. It's true, their teeth will sometimes if they're part of it. Yeah. Um, but it's you know, you can't put glass on that side. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:24

And you also can't expect to have animals in an exhibit and have them not be animals and do the things that they're doing. And so everything is cyclical and maintenance for the reason of, hey, they're gonna do weird stuff, so we just have to be on top of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:36

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's just part of it. Yep. It was kind of fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:40

I actually really liked seeing you guys all on a raft in there because it was fun to work with you guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:45

At some point I was on a ladder in there, I was in a wetsuit on a ladder working, bucking, and the yellowtail kept coming up and bidding my leg. And they don't respond to please stop.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:56

They just keep doing it.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:57

Well, they're underwater, so they actually couldn't hear you, but if you yelled it directly into the water, then they're not tail.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:02

I was trying really hard not to put my face in the water.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:05

Especially otters. It's offer down there. Um well, my last question about SoCal is like that was a huge project. It took months and months and months from planning to you know getting all the tanks in place and making sure everything was ready. What is the most fulfilling part like once you are done and once you can step back and take a look? What do you like the most about that?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:26

Yeah, it was I think the best part. There was um it was like two weeks ago.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:34

I think we had just opened, it was right before we did like the Saturday kind of soft opening. It was the Thursday before that, and there was, I don't know who Josh was here and a couple of us were here. It was super cool. Like we all just kind of um because Josh Josh had said earlier that day, he said, you know, I realized we're done when we say we're done. Yeah, right. Everything was running, you know, there's there's gonna be tweaks on that for months. That's how it goes. But everything was running, it was sustainable for animals, like like it was there. Um there were animals already getting in there and stuff, and so we went to see that side because we don't look at that, we don't get to see that side. I mean, we can. They don't we're not prohibited, but but that's not our joke.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:20

Stay behind the minute and you get out of here.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:22

I mean, the joke is that we're kind of not friendly, so we stay behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:26

But I disagree.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:27

You know, our our job's behind the scenes, and we focus on that, so sometimes we forget to look at the front of the scene, what we're contributing to. And there was a moment where and and it was, I think, my favorite moment of that, um, where we did have that, like we all went out and we were just looking and we paused at like what we contributed to, and it was super cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:48

That is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:51

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's fun, and my kids have been through, and it's like, you know, and I hear 'em tell their friends like my dad did that. Oh, that's really cute. It's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:00

Love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:00

But it's not, I mean, I I it's not me. It's all of us. Yeah. It's a great team. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:06

And nothing of that scale could be done by one individual person. You know, everything has to be done as a team.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:12

And yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:13

I that's a really cool feeling to just stand there with the people that worked so hard for months with you. Yeah. And to be able to be like, we did this. It's done. We can do other stuff for a little bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:23

No, I I am I am truly honored to work with this team. Like because we compliment. I mean, there's times when any job, right, you get stuck.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:31

You know, you've been plumbing and cutting pipes for days. And you get stuck and you can't even see where you're going. And so and I'll walk in. Just do that. And then you can keep going.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:39

It's so clear all of a sudden. Like, oh, thank goodness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:42

Or we'll take over for each other. Sometimes it's like just, you know, I know you need to walk. Or there's things I'm not good at that other people are, you know. And so, you know, we just take over and step in, and it's really cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:55

That's awesome. Well, that was a really good note to end on sort of the main body of the episode, but we do have some questions that our social media um listeners would like to ask you. So Madeline's going to take over a little bit and ask you some of these questions. Some of them are great.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:10

There's some really I mean social media, Instagram, we always show up and ask some really thought-provoking questions. We're very appreciative of it. Um, did you have any pets growing up that led you to kind of want to study and build and work in this industry?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:24

Yeah. Well, in the yeah, I I mean we always had dogs, of course, but I've always been in water and around water and outside and doing things. So, like, yeah, and I think I all it was natural for me to start doing aquariums. I can't tell you. I mean, when I was living at home at one point where I had some money to spend, I had like six tanks in my bedroom.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:46

So my future. Yeah. I'm on I'm well on my way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:51

It's like the opposite of the crazy cat lady. I had like the crazy catch. The sane fish guy.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:55

The very sane fish guy. Crazy cat lady, sane fish man. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:00

Nobody will actually argue that I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:04

I love that. Um, what in your career here at the aquarium has been the most difficult exhibit to plumb?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:13

Wow. Um I don't know. I mean, it like every one of them we hit points. But it's like what I was saying, we we work together so well. It's like there's some the the oil rig exhibit, I didn't really plumb it, I help some on it, um, but amazes me because they put a lot of stuff in a very tight area.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:36

Um, yeah. I for me, it's like all of them at some point have made me absolutely crazy and say I don't want to do this anymore. I can't. Put your hands in the air, yeah. Yeah, you know, um, but I can't I can't think of like a specific one that was super aggravating, you know, beyond just the normal stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:57

Normal aggravating.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:00

How do you measure things like salinity, nitrates, alkaline levels? How many do you alkalinity? Alkalinity and other important things.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:09

We um open our email and get our water quality report.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:13

Yeah, we're super lucky here. We are.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:15

We have a full lab, three lab technicians, and they monitor, so and then uh throughout the week, different things. There's a pretty consistent schedule of what's going to get measured uh and reported. So most of the time it's that. Um we will, if we're having issues, go and record like DO is dissolved oxygen, is one thing. If we have issues with a piece of equipment that we can't repair right away, we have handheld um monitors. Um and then yeah, the Selini and the alkalini is all through the lab, and we take the reports and then make adjustments. And even that, yeah, even that comes through generally a request. You know, we might notice something and then talk to whoever's in charge of that exhibit and say, hey, you know, what's going on?

SPEAKER_02 1:32:02

Well that's the most important thing to consider when constructing a habitat.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:10

Right. Um so if we're, you know, we're going to look at uh if it's like a temperate or a cold water or a tropical, um, and then you know, it's the size of that so we could space things out. Um but the the filtration is, you know, we have we run we try and run like a one to two time X, like we're trying to turn that tank at least one or two times an hour. Yeah. The total volume of that tank, at least minimum through the filtration. Um and then it's it's going there, but then we have to look at like like crabs is going to take a different amount of chilling, right? Because they're uh 48 degrees or 50 degrees, or GPO, giant Pacific octopus is 48 degrees. So we're gonna have to put a lot of chill water into that or into the the um chiller mechanism. Um and it will require more um than something that is more temperate. Yeah, you know, so it's I don't know that there's one important right. I guess hold water is very important.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:15

First thing first does it hold the water.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:17

Let's let's fix that. But yeah, it's it's because it's you know, you have to look what's going in. Yeah. So that's what it is, just building to that species or that general uh climate.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:27

I think it's probably I do think with like the chilled water and stuff, sometimes I'll see Reed working in seemingly the most random part of the aquarium, like the middle of a hallway and like on a ladder. And I'm just like, what are you doing? Like, how could that possibly be? But if you are ever visiting and you look up, there's pipes everywhere and everything is really interconnected, and then all a lot of the filtration is outside in our service yard. And so because of that, it's your job to also know what is connected to and sure they're labeled, but how to follow things and sort of like what to look for. And this there's I think like two weeks ago, you were in the hallway on a ladder by our food kitchen, and I was like, hello, what is what's happening up there? And that was for air conditioning purposes, dude, just so many things. What do you have like a map of all of the pipes in the brain? My brain. It's called Reed's brain.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:21

We have so uh yeah, we have some blueprints and they show you some things, but one of the things I really when we bring in new techs, um, and if I'm spent when I'm spending time training them, one of the things I I feel like one of the most important things is learning how to trace systems.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:39

So literally you point at a pump, right? The water goes in, water goes out. It's pretty you could tell pretty quickly where the water goes in the pump, where it comes out.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:49

And then I always I because I do it, point at that and trace the plumbing with your finger how it goes and learn how it moves through the system. Right. And then if you we I try and start them on a smaller system, that's how work worked for me. Um, some people will do the line drawings, like I was talking about earlier. Um, I don't love that, but it's you know, it needs to be done. So I do a lot of it with my finger, and at some points you're you know it goes in the wall there, yeah, and it comes out the wall there, yeah. So it must run over that office or through here or whatever, because I know it's moving that way and it goes. So there are some guesses, there's schematics somewhere, but usually in the moment you're just kind of pointing and walking around and following something, yeah. And it's weird because if you're looking at the pipes, for whatever reason your mouth falls open every time. So you're walking around with your mouth gaping open. Pointing at the There goes life support, which is why our reputation is but the what you were asking about the we were working on our the cooling for the building and the cooling for the animals is the same system. So um it's a big we we chill water down. We have at any given time when everyone's working and happy, we have 42 degree water coming from our plant pumping throughout the building, and then we run valves in different places on each system, or or in um they're called air handlers. Um, and that's we blow air through it, or we have plates, and one side is that really cold water, and the other side is the system water, and that's how we control the temperature for those animals.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:30

Oh, that's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:31

So it goes in hand in hand.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:33

Yeah. Um, okay. Last question is if we had an an unlimited budget and space, well let me start over. If we had an unlimited budget and space wasn't an issue, what exhibit would you like to build? What would you put in it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:47

I think what what I put in it, I don't know if I'd want to build it.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:50

Two different things.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:51

Like I I've always got a lot of people. Well would you like to project manage? Like, I think sharks are super cool. Um like that's part of the reason why I wanted to dive here so I can have sharks. Um so it'd be awesome to have like a massive shark exhibit. Um like unlimited. I don't know that I necessarily want to build it. Um but it's it's the bigger the pipe, the harder it is to glue. And gluing is a chemical reaction, right? And it wants to so you you put the pipe together and then it starts to kind of melt and causes and it pushes back out. And the bigger the pipe, the harder you have to push back in. I'm not little and sometimes I have to lay on them to hold in place.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:34

It's just like a lot of manual labor to build.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:35

Yeah, it's exhausting, and that's for like a four or six-inch pipe.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:40

A big, big shark exhibit is like 10, 12, 14-inch pipe.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:43

Yeah, yeah. You're just getting pushed back.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:45

Yeah, I mean you have to you have to use mechanical courses to hold them. I mean, it would be super cool to contribute, but I wouldn't wouldn't it be sad if someone did someone built it for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:57

There you go. That's awesome. Cool, that's all of our social media questions.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:00

Thanks, Reed. This is I have learned so much about your job, and I already thought I had a decent understanding of it. And there is so much more that you guys do. And I mean the life support is sort of like the backbone of the aquarium, you know, like maybe underappreciated when people are talking about the organs of the aquarium. Like there's a heart, there's a brain, but the backbone you're supporting everything that we do. Yeah. Yeah. Just support. I guess if you yeah, you just but it is awesome what you guys are doing, and we really do have a cool team. Um, I feel bad every time I have to call you to be like, I blew something up, but someone always comes and fixes it. And what an amazing resource to have on hand 24-7 to know everything about what we're doing here.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:42

And don't feel bad when you blow it up. We are professional grumblers, but we actually most of the time enjoy fixing it.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:49

I think Reed just likes coming over to the frog areas and then also seeing frogs while fixing things.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:54

Yeah, there's, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:54

There's frogs. That's a good view. That's a good view.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:58

You know, it's just what I have to crawl into really small spaces. Well, the favorite game in life support is to see what we could stuff 6-3 of Reed into.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:07

Go, go, go. Well, that's awesome. Thank you so much for this awesome interview. I mean, I this has been great. I've learned so much. I didn't know most of that stuff, unfortunately. And I think we gotta highlight, you know, something that literally supports all the time we're at the aquarium.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:23

Definitely look up, check out those pipes, and then see Reed following you with a Twitter. And if you see it, perfect. Cool. Thanks so much, Reed. Awesome, thank you. Aquarium of the Pacific is brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific, a 501c3 nonprofit organization. In 2023, the Aquarium celebrates 25 years of connecting millions of people worldwide to the beauty and wonder of our ocean planet. Head to aquariumofpacific.org to learn more about our 25th anniversary celebration. Keep up with the Aquarium on social media at Aquarium Pacific on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:04

This podcast is produced by Aaron Lundy, Madeline Walden, and Scott Shaw. Our music is by Andrew Reitzma, and our podcast art is by Brandy Kenney. Special thanks to Cecile Fisher, Anita Viez, and our audiovisual and education departments, and to all of our amazing podcast guests for taking time out of their day to talk about the important work that they do. Podcific wouldn't be possible without the support of the aquarium's donors, members, guests, and supporters. Thanks for listening.